Re: is glib too bloated?

[Gabriel Schulhof <nix go-nix ca>]

On Tue, 2007-04-24 at 13:28 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> > Don't forget that the more libraries you have, the longer the dynamic
> > linker will work to resolve all the symbols, and consequently the longer
> > it will take for each application to start.
> 
> And each shared library consumes at least one page of private
> per-process data memory.

These are absolutely true.

So, I'm wondering: How difficult would it be to set up the GLib build
system to give distributors a choice as to whether to compile all bits
(glib, gobject, gthread) into a single .so (e.g. for desktop
applications) or leave it as is or, for that matter, split it further
(though not by default), as Brandon has suggested into more .so files ?

And, while we're on this track: How about GTK and GDK ? In some embedded
systems it may very well turn out that GDK is used on its own far too
rarely to warrant having it a separate library. Why not then have a
single library and save a little loading time and a page of memory.

Having such a flexible build system could be a boon.